There Is Something More Precious Than Money

When my siblings and I were young, we never spent our Hong Bao money. Don't ask me why. We didn't have any discussion not to spend. Neither did mother instruct us not to spend.

Every new year, we opened our Hong Baos with great excitement and counted the money. It was always a small sum but the crisp new notes made us happy. Then we would save the money, each in our own places - until the coming of the next new year.

Then on the evening of the eve of lunar new year, after dinner, my siblings and I would gather with mother in the bedroom where we would take out those crisp new notes, carefully put away for the whole year, and give them to mother. There was a lot of joy as we once again counted the money and then repack them to make Hong Baos for mother to give away.

There is something more precious than money. It is a mother's love and the warmth of a family. My mother is one of the greatest blessings in my life.

The RISIS Orchid

Here's the RISIS orchid I said I would post.

River Valley Road was very far from my home. At that time I lived in a kampong house somewhere in the east bounded by Bartley Road and Upper Paya Lebar Road.

There was no direct bus to River Valley Road. To save on bus fares, I walked all the way to Serangoon Road from where I took a direct bus to River Valley. It was quite a distance. But when you are young, you are energetic. No distance is too great to walk.

I did crazy things like that with my friend anyway when I was in secondary school. We walked all the way back home from school because the buses were always crowded after school. My friend's father was shocked when he discovered this and forbade her to do that again. Haha And that put an end to our walking.

The shophouse was directly opposite the bus stop where I would alight. I would be early and would wait at the bus stop for my boss and his wife to arrive to open the shutter to the shop. My boss drove a Volkswagen.

Lunch every day was noodle from the coffee shop next door. My boss' wife asked if I didn't get sick of eating the same food every day. I said no which was true because I wasn't particularly fussy about food. But the reasons why I had practically the same food every lunch was because I had no colleagues (boss' wife did not count as colleague) and I didn't know River Valley other than the shophouse where I worked and I was too timid to try to venture around on my own. Also, it saved money.

A few times I wanted to throw the testimonial away because it is now a useless piece of paper but then I didn't because it represented a piece of history. Once I thought of giving the RISIS Orchid to my helper who was going back for good because I have no use for it but then, being a sentimental kind of person, I changed my mind.

My First Job

MY FIRST JOB was a clerk for a very small company.

It was after my 'A' level exam and while waiting for the results. I sent out letters and they called me for an interview. Some days later, I received a phone call telling me to report for work. I was elated at being successful in landing myself a job.

My joy was somewhat dampened on my first day of work when I was told that I wasn't the first choice. The first choice was a very experienced person. That person, however, did ...not turn up for work.

So here I was, the second choice. Still, I was happy the first choice did not turn up which gave me an opportunity to be employed.

It was a very small company. There were only 4 of us - my boss who called himself the managing director, his wife who did the accounting work, myself who handled all the correspondences and other paper work, and another boy who drove the pick-up and did various jobs including making deliveries.

It was a tyre business along with tools and accessories, car batteries and all that. The company was located in a shophouse at River Valley Road and quite often, my boss' parents would pay visits to the shop.

My boss and his wife did not appear to have a loving relationship because his wife would often tell me stories of how he courted her, how loving he was during courtship and how different everything became after marriage.

As my boss was often out on business, she had lots of opportunities to tell me her stories. I listened to her without commenting. I didn't think it was a good thing for a wife to speak ill of her own husband to his employee.

I spent a fair bit of time sitting with my boss as he gave instructions on what he wanted corresponded. My boss was probably Chinese educated because his English was poor. A Mr Hing. I have forgotten the rest of his name.

I often corrected his grammar and constructions. And this pleased him greatly. The correspondences were mostly to companies overseas such as Europe. Through these correspondences, he was successful in securing for his company a sole dealership in what they called a 'tyre opening' machine.

When I left to continue my studies a few months later, my boss was sad to see me go. He gave me a beautiful testimonial of my work there. His wife gave me a RISIS orchid as a parting gift.

I didn't know what to do with the orchid and still don't know what to do with it. So I just left it in my drawer at home. It's there and I will look for it and post a photo another day.

After I left, the company also went out of my mind. I had embarked on another chapter in my life.

But years later, I was travelling on the train when I passed by a building with the sigh that says "Hock Lee Trading' at the top, and I wondered to myself if that was the same company that I once worked in. If it was, then the company must surely have grown much since its humble days at River Valley Road

At 7-month-old, our first triumph and miracle!

The round-the-clock tube feeding at 3-hour intervals had given Daniel a slightly chubby look.

Tube feeding was a temporary solution. He couldn't possibly be tube-fed for the rest of his life, could he? Eventually he must learn to eat without choking. That was one of our concerns.

Thus began my son's long and arduous journey to learn to do the things that normal people have taken for granted.

He was 4 months old when I started to give him a milk-and-cereal mix by spoon so that he had the chance to learn to eat orally.

I propped him up on a pillow supported with bolsters at an incline so that gravity would help the cereal and milk to stay in his mouth and flow back to his throat for him to swallow. It was difficult. Most of the food was spilled. Every so often he would choke trying to swallow.

Off and on I also tried to give him milk from the bottle without success.

One night when he was 7 months old, we had just returned from my mother's place when I discovered that the feeding tube had become 'undone', probably due to his cheek rubbing against my shoulder.

It was night and we did not have any sterile feeding tube at home to use. The pharmacies were all closed. What was I to do? I was upset.

I prepared just 4 ounces of milk. My son would have to try to drink from the bottle. I wasn't going to give up.

Lo and behold, my son drank from the bottle! He was hungry. He drank all one ounce of it and then he stopped, tired and panting. I let him rest for some minutes and then I gave him the bottle again. And he drank another ounce and then he stopped to rest. Thus, resting in between, we finished 4 ounces of milk without choking once!

Oh the joy. You don't know how happy I was that night. I was so very proud of my son. You don't know what it was like to hold an empty milk bottle in your hand. I wanted to announce to the world that my son drank a bottle of milk all by himself. I didn't of course.

Next time you see a newborn baby sucking contentedly at a bottle of milk, you don't realize it but you are witnessing a miracle.

A lesson I learned from my son's birth: Count your blessing. You are more blessed than you realize.

Many things that we take for granted and do effortlessly are challenges for my son.

We quickly discovered, after he was born, that he could not coordinate the actions of sucking and swallowing. With every suck on the bottle, he cried because he choked on the milk.

We had to feed him by a feeding tube inserted from his nose down to his stomach.

We worried about how to make sure the tube stay in him and how to feed him when he grew older.

I fed my son round the clock. You know, trying to give him as much as I could so that he would have 'reserves' for the future.

For 7 months, I tube-fed by son every 3 hours round the clock. 8 times a day.

It was a most difficult and traumatic time for my son. I carried him in one arm and held the tube in the other. Every feeding took an hour and a half because he cried a lot and the pressure exerted meant the milk was hindered from flowing down the tube to his stomach. I had to be careful also to make sure the milk did not aspirate into his lungs. I walked around the house trying to pacify him as i poured the milk and waited for it to flow down.

The only time my son did not cry during feeding was at night when he was asleep. We let him sleep on an inclined plane so that we could give him milk at night.

For 7 months I had 3 to 4 hours of interrupted sleep each night. Those were days when I was really very tired. There were a number of times I was so tired and so sleepy from lack of sleep that I dozed off in the middle of a milk feed and drop the tube I held in my hand. The milk spilled onto the baby cot and onto my son.

Thankfully my son was not hurt.

I love my son. My time and my plans revolve around my son.